A lamba is the traditional garment worn by men and women that live in Madagascar. The textile, highly emblematic of Malagasy culture, consists of a rectangular length of cloth wrapped around the body.
Sakalava lamba arindrano and malabary
Merina woman in a white lamba
Colorful prints from Asia are popular in coastal towns.
Lambahoany reading Coming home is lovely
Architecture of Madagascar
The architecture of Madagascar is unique in Africa, bearing strong resemblance to the construction norms and methods of Southern Borneo from which the earliest inhabitants of Madagascar are believed to have immigrated. Throughout Madagascar, the Kalimantan region of Borneo and Oceania, most traditional houses follow a rectangular rather than round form, and feature a steeply sloped, peaked roof supported by a central pillar.
Typical brick houses with columns and west-facing veranda, near Antananarivo
This house in South Kalimantan bears many of the iconic construction features brought from Borneo to Madagascar two thousand years ago: wood plank walls, piles to raise the house from the ground and a steeply sloping roof topped with crossed gable beams to form "roof horns."
The most traditional coastal style: houses with thatched roofing of ravinala on low piles in Sambava
Woven bamboo walls, plank roofing